Funeral Rites in Effigy.
When a person dies at a distance from home, and it is impossible to perform the funeral rites over the body, it is cremated in effigy. The special term for this is Kusa-putra, or “son of the Kusa grass.” Colonel Tod gives a case of this when Râja Ummeda of Bûndi abdicated: “An image of the prince was made, and a pyre was erected on which it was consumed. The hair and whiskers of Ajît, his successor, were taken off and offered to the Manes; lamentations and wailing were heard in the Queen’s apartments, and the twelve days of mourning were held as if Ummeda had really deceased; on the expiration of which the installation of his successor took place.”211